The Rocture
Our humble van tread the lonely road cautiously, catering to each dip in the pavement. A band of four brothers in arms, bound earnestly by our righteous rock and motivated by the will of men with hearts aflame, together rode to meet destiny herself on a strobe-lit stage. Our foes would suffer a noble death by slings and arrows of power chords and screaming solos delivered in white-hot passion. We fly the green-black war-flag of our chosen name Carpediem, and sail swiftly along on the good ship Mini-Van.
Our bassist, Billy, was at the helm, myself riding shotgun, our drummer Steven and Matt our guitarist in the back, getting friendly with all of our equipment. When I heard Matt halt his licks of fire, I knew something was up. That guy only set down his guitar when something big was going down, or when getting a text message. This time it turned out to be both.
Matt had always been full of epic nonsensical lines, so when he said the world was going to end after our show we of course just blew him off. To our initial annoyance, he kept on about the text, with a believable urgency laced in his voice. When asked who sent the text, all he could say was:
“Look.”
“I don’t believe it” I said, “We just got a text message from Jesus.”
Matt would never joke idly about Jesus, for God was the source from where Matt drew his power behind his mighty chops, and with a callback number like 777 and a list of every sin we’d ever committed ever no one was contesting it. So the world, according to our divine text, was destined to end right after our show, and somehow our performance could change that. To add insult to injury we were following Sweeting on stage, the easy crowd favorite. No pressure. An iron triangle such as Sweeting was no elementary act to follow, but the looming Apocalypse was no great pushover to precede.
Other bands might have succumbed to frenzied panic, other bands might have despaired, thinking all their yesterdays to have lighted fools a path to dusty death. We were no such band. We strutted and fretted our hour upon the stage each time we were on it like it was our last. To us every show was the end all to be all and we performed like it. Not even a text message from the heavens themselves could inspire uneasiness in us. One last chance to perform, one final time to play: perchance, to rock.
Time began to move rapidly thereafter, and soon we were before a mass of angry anonymous faces unaware of the doom on the horizons brim. They were no more than sinners in the hands of an angry God, and we were here to wash them of it with the sacrament of rock. The crowd looked to us like lost sheep. We looked at the crowd as might a shepherd view his flock. Then, in that most brutal silence, we began to play.
What followed some people said afterward was nothing short of a miracle. Their melting faces aghast, we set forth a barrage of riffs that stung like happy daggers. Matt’s tenacious licks engulfed the static air and set it aflame. Billy’s bass-lines and Steven’s beats pumped it forward like blood in a vein. I too played my part, sending vocal tones sailing out, flying flags of sincere aggression. We played as though every note kept the end time’s emergence at bay for that instant only, and thundercloud amps cranked out our claps so loud that God himself might rock to us.
Whether the world would have really ended that night we have no way of gauging. All we had to go by was the newly clean cries of a jubilant crowd and the rising of an unapologetic sun that cast on us rays of reassurance. To whatever ends, we had saved the world in at least some small way. Our eyes were watching God, and we played our show as though the hand of that most mighty rocker threatened to come down upon us. We were confident that this was a tale told by no idiot and had been full of much more than just sound and fury, and had indeed signified something.
Our bassist, Billy, was at the helm, myself riding shotgun, our drummer Steven and Matt our guitarist in the back, getting friendly with all of our equipment. When I heard Matt halt his licks of fire, I knew something was up. That guy only set down his guitar when something big was going down, or when getting a text message. This time it turned out to be both.
Matt had always been full of epic nonsensical lines, so when he said the world was going to end after our show we of course just blew him off. To our initial annoyance, he kept on about the text, with a believable urgency laced in his voice. When asked who sent the text, all he could say was:
“Look.”
“I don’t believe it” I said, “We just got a text message from Jesus.”
Matt would never joke idly about Jesus, for God was the source from where Matt drew his power behind his mighty chops, and with a callback number like 777 and a list of every sin we’d ever committed ever no one was contesting it. So the world, according to our divine text, was destined to end right after our show, and somehow our performance could change that. To add insult to injury we were following Sweeting on stage, the easy crowd favorite. No pressure. An iron triangle such as Sweeting was no elementary act to follow, but the looming Apocalypse was no great pushover to precede.
Other bands might have succumbed to frenzied panic, other bands might have despaired, thinking all their yesterdays to have lighted fools a path to dusty death. We were no such band. We strutted and fretted our hour upon the stage each time we were on it like it was our last. To us every show was the end all to be all and we performed like it. Not even a text message from the heavens themselves could inspire uneasiness in us. One last chance to perform, one final time to play: perchance, to rock.
Time began to move rapidly thereafter, and soon we were before a mass of angry anonymous faces unaware of the doom on the horizons brim. They were no more than sinners in the hands of an angry God, and we were here to wash them of it with the sacrament of rock. The crowd looked to us like lost sheep. We looked at the crowd as might a shepherd view his flock. Then, in that most brutal silence, we began to play.
What followed some people said afterward was nothing short of a miracle. Their melting faces aghast, we set forth a barrage of riffs that stung like happy daggers. Matt’s tenacious licks engulfed the static air and set it aflame. Billy’s bass-lines and Steven’s beats pumped it forward like blood in a vein. I too played my part, sending vocal tones sailing out, flying flags of sincere aggression. We played as though every note kept the end time’s emergence at bay for that instant only, and thundercloud amps cranked out our claps so loud that God himself might rock to us.
Whether the world would have really ended that night we have no way of gauging. All we had to go by was the newly clean cries of a jubilant crowd and the rising of an unapologetic sun that cast on us rays of reassurance. To whatever ends, we had saved the world in at least some small way. Our eyes were watching God, and we played our show as though the hand of that most mighty rocker threatened to come down upon us. We were confident that this was a tale told by no idiot and had been full of much more than just sound and fury, and had indeed signified something.